20 years of Placebo. 20 years and now I was about to see them live for the very first time. I can’t really say why. Anyway, I was finally there. Since I had to work that day I showed up a little late, so I only got to hear the last bits of the support band “Deaf Havana” from London. But what I heard sounded pretty good. I might have a closer look on these guys.

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To start the Placebo show, they displayed the casino video of “Every You Every Me”. Unfortunately this meant, they wouldn’t play the song live. Too bad, I’d have loved to hear it. But 20 years of band history offers many great songs to fill a setlist.

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The band went onstage and kicked it off with “Pure Morning”. After the first two songs, Stefan spoke to the audience in surprisingly good German: “Guten Abend, München! Herzlich willkommen zu unserer Geburtstags-Party!” A couple of songs later, Brian introduced the whole band in a quite funny matter. He had a very specific way to address he crowd: “Ladies and Gentlemen, and those of you who find themselves in-between, which – statistically – are many. Some of you might not even know it yet, but after tonight you will.”

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During “Without You I’m Nothing” they showed a couple of David Bowie pictures on the screen as a tribute which led to many cheers. After “Lady Of The Flowers” Brian made a short announcement: “This is the end of what we call ‘the melancholic section’ of our show. For 20 years we’ve been supreme melancholists – and professional onanists – there’s not a lot of money in this, though.”

Motto for the second part of the show: “There’s no Spaß without dancing”. So now it was time for the rocky stuff, because after all, it was supposed to be a birthday party. And the audience did dance, even in the seated areas.

They did two encores and ended the show with “Running Up That Hill” which I liked very much. I enjoyed my evening with Placebo and I definitely won’t wait for another 20 years to see them again.